Paradis Found: Her Next Chapter

The actress and singer opens up about her professional and personal passions.

On the eve of her breakup with Johnny Depp, actress and singer Vanessa Paradis opens up about her new role—in love and work .

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Cedric Buchet/Art Partner

Paradis Found: Her Next Chapter

Just two days before the announcement of her separation from Johnny Depp, her companion of 14 years and the father of her two children, Vanessa Paradis is sitting calmly in a hotel on the Normandy coast. It's the last day of the Cabourg Romantic Film Festival, and as paparazzi heave against the velvet ropes erected around the Belle Epoque Grand Hôtel, the actress-singer is perched on a chair in the bar—delicate, big-eyed, her game face on. "Love is the strongest and most fragile thing we have in life," says Paradis, 39. "Nothing is ever for sure, but when something in love doesn't work from the beginning, it's never going to work. Don't push it."

Until recently, Paradis and Depp appeared to have the kind of soul-mate insta-bond that needed no extra effort. "When you meet the love of your life, it's just obvious and natural and easier," she says. But, she adds, "you keep learning all the time. Sometimes you could be in an unhappy relationship; you are very much in love with someone, but it's making you unhappy and you think things can change and you can work it out."

From the outside at least, Depp and Paradis's relationship was enviable and wildly romantic: It began as love at first sight at Paris's Hôtel Costes in 1998. Depp spotted her at the hotel bar. "I saw those eyes, and—boom! My life as a single man was done," he said last year. They made French their own private language, speaking it when they "needed to have intimacy, when you want to have secrets in the middle of a crowd," Paradis says. Two children quickly followed, Lily-Rose, now 13, and John, nicknamed Jack, 10.

However, parenthood did not render the couple idle. After Pirates of the Caribbean went blockbuster in 2003, Depp was catapulted into Hollywood's A-list ranks while Paradis continued to alternate albums with French-language film roles, like Café de Flore, out in the U.S. in November. As working-star parents, they became the ultimate chic vagabonds, all artfully unkempt tresses and torn jeans, with towheaded toddlers on their hips. The family spent half their time in Los Angeles and half at a rural idyll near St. Tropez, occasionally popping over to their private island in the Bahamas.

"It takes a lot of thinking and organization," Paradis says of the nomadic existence. Even now, their primary concern is to maintain a sense of balance and protect their children from the tabloid glare. "We have a very privileged life. But even when we are in L.A., where it's focused on the film industry, it's also very family-oriented. I'm in love with the schools. We try to keep it normal."

She should know about the pitfalls of the public eye—after all, Paradis has been performing since she was eight, when she sang on a French-TV talent show. She became a national sensation in 1987, at 14, after releasing the chart-topping ballad "Joe le Taxi." With her angelic voice, bright-green doe eyes, anvil-shaped cheekbones, and that cute gap in her teeth, Paradis became something like a Euro-chic Britney Spears. After that debut, much of what she touched turned to gold. Switching to acting, she won a César (the French version of the Oscars) at 17 for the romantic drama Noce Blanche and has racked up prestigious music and film awards ever since.

I was for sure not prepared for fame when it happened," Paradis recalls of her precipitous rise. "But nobody pushed me to do it. I wanted to sing, to dance, to work." Now that Lily-Rose is one year shy of "Joe le Taxi" age, writes her own songs, and loves to sing (and in her cutoff jeans and tousled hair is the spitting image of her maman), Paradis sees a different path for her daughter. "Right now I hope she can wait, live her life, and be prepared. She sings a lot, which is great to build up her voice. But it's a very strange situation," she says. Paradis is referring to childhood stardom, though with all the extra attention paid to her private life, what was once strange has gotten stranger still.

But while Paradis is intensely private, there is none of the stereotypical soigné French haughtiness; she warmly greets the half dozen friends and fans who stop by the table, including a girl with Down syndrome. (In Café de Flore, Paradis portrays a single mother whose son has Down's.)

When she does make a rare public appearance, such as at Chanel's resort presentation at Versailles this past May, the paparazzi flock—because in France, although Depp is undoubtedly a big star, Paradis is an icon. Her style moves are followed as breathlessly as those of another Depp ex, Kate Moss. (Paradis has a taste for mixing coquettish vintage frocks with a dash of '70s rock 'n' roll. One favorite store is Parisian boutique Casablanca.) She became the face of Chanel's Coco perfume in 1991, well before fashion houses filled their front rows with music stars. Her liaison with Chanel is so strong that her tenure has outlasted even that of Inès de la Fressange. Now Paradis is the face of the Coco Cocoon handbag and Rouge Coco lipstick. For her, though, nothing can top collaborating with Jean-Paul Goude on that controversial 1992 Coco television ad, in which she was swinging on a trapeze in a giant birdcage, splashing perfume around and whistling "Stormy Weather." Goude "has the most amazing crazy ideas," she says. "I had to take trapeze lessons for a week," she recalls, adding, "He was so much fun. And he's beautiful to look at—he's such a handsome man."

As for Paradis's own beauty, it has simply morphed over the years: She has aged without a lot of fuss. Deep laugh lines frame her teal-smudged eyes, and her face reveals considerable animation. She says she doesn't plan on plastic surgery. ("I don't work in America, so I don't feel the pressure.") And forget about altering what the French call les dents du bonheur, or lucky teeth. "Why would I fix them? I was born with them. I can spit water through them. They're useful!"

Woe to the paparazzo who comes into her range. Although the day that Paradis moves on, in France at least, the press will run wild again. There are already rumors linking her with singer-songwriter Benjamin Biolay and Lenny Kravitz, which one should take with an enormous grain of fleur de sel. That said, Paradis does have an eye for a specific kind of man. "Well, my type is obviously creative," she says, with a quick smile. "Creative, with burning eyes and a pretty mouth."

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